Editor's Selection Icon

I'm a purist, and I don't know why. I see people jogging on the street with their Ipods and it feels like they're cheating. I honestly can't explain this irrationality. It might stem from the days when I used to go to the gym and I would be hill-climbing on an excercise bike while watching a room full of soft, barely sweating over-weight house-wives toddle on a treadmill while watching MTV.

My only response when trying to explain this view is 'own your pain, own your workout - don't remove yourself from the situation', in my mind, it's the present frame of reference that makes you mentally harder. Of course, not everyone wants to be 'harder' and not everyone has the same aims in working out.

And so I think it's time I confronted this bizarre, irrational little prejudice of mine. What benefits can listening to music bring when working out? Bishop, Karageorghis and Kinrade (2010) took a bunch of tennis players (who ranged in proficiency from local to international ranks) and gave them a virtual tennis task that was designed to measure Arousal and Reaction-Time. They varied the tempo and the intensity of the music across conditions. They found that faster tempo increased arousal (and was perceived as more pleasant), and higher intensity (i.e. volume) increased arousal and Reaction-Time. And Silence, my personal preference, was least beneficial of all - except for the slow-moderate music condition.

Ok, but so what? Fast music that's Loud makes us twitchy, it seems to me that this isn't going to help any particular athletes with the possible exception of China's National Ping-Pong team. Most of us Jog, or Skip, or Cycle. So Dyrlund and Wininger (2008) made people run on treadmills - not unlike lab rats - while listening to music rated by preference. Paying attention to the music increases your overall enjoyment of the excercise, and again, intensity rates correlates well with their performance (perceived exertion). Now given that participants could choose between most or least preferred music it's surprising that there's no given difference between levels of preference. Their measure of performance was weak (perceived exertion) but let's put that in context - we don't work out with our own heart-rate monitors - we just kind of infer how we feel. I guess this is why Gyms get away with pumping out the techno music - it makes us feel good about the level of our workout, and so long as it's loud enough, we actually do work harder.

Finally, Waterhouse, Hudson and Edwards (2009) took music and artificially sped it up and slowed it down (in 10% increments). They found that people's performance (measured in cycles/minute) increased as the tempo increased.

Note: Big error bars, but it's trending in the upward direction.

I wonder how big the difference would be if the music was

varied by more than 10%.

So, perhaps my predjudice is misplaced. Sure, sure, we all knew music makes workouts more enjoyable - but it appears it can actually deliver benefits. My only worry is how those overweight middle-age treadmill waddlers might perform without MTV... In the meantime I may have to reconsider my position on workouts and Ipods. I have spent many, many years with Taekwon-Do instructors pushing me without the benefit of the a pump-class setting. And perhaps my goal in workouts is not the same as everyone else and so that leaves me as a bit of a work-out snob. But it's not all my fault - a nice little maxim held by my whole Taekwon-Do school is:

"Every good instructor is a Sadist, and every good student is a masochist".

---

Bishop, D., Karageorghis, C., & Kinrade, N. (2009) TEffects of Musically-Induced Emotions on Choice Reaction Time Performance. The Sport Psychologist, 23, 1 - 19.

Drylund, A., & Wininger, S. (2008). The Effects of Music Preference and Excercise Intensity of Psychological Variables. Journal of Music Therapy, 2, 114 - 134.

Waterhouse J, Hudson P, & Edwards B (2010). Effects of music tempo upon submaximal cycling performance. Scandinavian journal of medicine & science in sports, 20 (4), 662-9 PMID: 19793214